mpande
Posts: 64
Joined: Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:52 pm

Updater Errors

Mon Oct 31, 2022 9:24 pm

Hi! We did a deployment of an upgrade to 190 sites. Each of our sites has as scheduled task set up on the Updater page of advanced installer to be run as NT AUTHORITY. The scheduled task calls the updater program with the extension of "/silentall -nofreqcheck -nogui HKLM\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Company\Id" Of those sites 61 did not upgrade this morning.

We had remote access to 36 of those 61 sites.
19 sites had an error 0xE000000E. I ran the scheduled task manually at two sites that encountered the error and it ran successfully. I've currently left the others alone to avoid interfering with the business's operations.

7 ran the updater, which showed as "0x0 The operation completed successfully in task scheduler", but never downloaded or ran the installer to the updates directory. Again I've currently left the others alone to avoid interfering with operations.

10 of the sites had miscellaneous errors (2 had 0x2EF3, 1 had 0x2F19, 2 had 0x2EFD, 3 had no internet at the time, 1 was installing a windows update, 1 was missing the uninstallation msi file)

I know the error 0xE000000E is supposed to indicate "The signature of the updates configuration file is missing or is invalid", but at the two sites where I ran the scheduled task again manually the updater ran correctly and the upgrader was downloaded and run. Is a configuration file really causing this issue? If so, what is the updates configuration file referred to? Is it the ini file stored on the client, or the file with aiu tag hosted remotely? How can we avoid this error?

Also what happened at the 7 sites that reported completion? What can we do to avoid this scenario from occurring again?

Going forward we plan to deploy our solution to more and more sites which we do not have remote access to, and it is also not feasible to manually address the growing number of customers that we can access. What steps can we take to ensure that the updater program will make the upgrade take place?

Dan
Posts: 4513
Joined: Wed Apr 24, 2013 3:51 pm

Re: Updater Errors

Mon Nov 07, 2022 6:57 am

Hello,
19 sites had an error 0xE000000E. I ran the scheduled task manually at two sites that encountered the error and it ran successfully. I've currently left the others alone to avoid interfering with the business's operations.
This error is returned by the Updater.exe when the signature of the updates configuration file is missing or is invalid.

e.g. make sure that the updates configuration file always starts with the ;aiu; Check the Examples of Updates Configuration File article where you can see different examples of configuration.
7 ran the updater, which showed as "0x0 The operation completed successfully in task scheduler", but never downloaded or ran the installer to the updates directory. Again I've currently left the others alone to avoid interfering with operations.
The 0 means that the Updater.exe found updates for the application. When you will run the Updater.exe manually, please check what is being downloaded in the download folder e.g. default one is:

Code: Select all

[CommonAppDataFolder][Manufacturer]\[ProductName]\updates\
download folder.png
download folder.png (24.72KiB)Viewed 34485 times
10 of the sites had miscellaneous errors (2 had 0x2EF3, 1 had 0x2F19, 2 had 0x2EFD, 3 had no internet at the time, 1 was installing a windows update, 1 was missing the uninstallation msi file)
As you can see, most of the issues are outside the Updater or the setup control.

You can add a check in the setup, so that the downloaded update would not be launched for installation if the machine is not ready to perform an installation. e.g. Enable the Prevent running if pending system changes that require a reboot is detected option from the Launch Conditions page.

Also, if the setup is of EXE, I would recommend you to enable the Do not delete extracted MSI and CAB files option from the Builds page. If the setup is of MSI type, the MSI availability is under the Windows control. This scenario can occur when third party disk cleanup tools remove files from C:\Windows\Installer and the user removed the MSI after install.
Going forward we plan to deploy our solution to more and more sites which we do not have remote access to, and it is also not feasible to manually address the growing number of customers that we can access. What steps can we take to ensure that the updater program will make the upgrade take place?
You can configure the scheduled task so that it can execute more often (maybe define multiple triggers) to cover the unexpected cases, maybe at the next run the system is available for receiving the updates e.g. no updates are scheduled for installation, no pending reboot etc.

Best regards,
Dan
Dan Ghiorghita - Advanced Installer Team
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